Children are the most vulnerable part of the population who continue to suffer from atrocities, not only in Ukraine but also around the world.
According to official data, since February 24, 2022, 510 Ukrainian children have been killed, 1141 wounded, 2030 missing, 19,546 deported and forcibly displaced, and 13 victims of sexual violence. To date, Ukraine has officially managed to return 386 children. However, it is impossible to establish the exact number of children affected by Russia due to active hostilities and the temporary occupation of part of Ukraine’s territory.
In addition to physical violence, an important part of the policy of the occupiers, in particular the Russians, is the “re-education” and “conversion” of children to the state ideology and their forced introduction to citizenship.
At a separate discussion, “Life Without Borders: Honoring the memory of children lost in war”, organized by the Ukrainian delegation, representatives from Angola, Tanzania, Malawi, Mexico, Portugal, Turkey and other countries discussed how the international community can influence crimes against children.
During the meeting, Ukrainian MPs Lesia Vasylenko and Oleksandr Kornienko presented the initiative of the Office of the President of Ukraine Bring Kids Back UA to their colleagues.
Andrii Mikheiev, an expert on international law at the International Center for Ukrainian Victory emphasized that the deportation of children is a crime of genocide.
“Genocide is not only the direct physical and biological destruction of a certain group of people. The forced deportation of children of one group to another and their forced re-education is also a type of genocide. In particular, abducted Ukrainian children are imposed to everything Russian. They are transferred to Russian schools and the Russian cultural environment, everything Ukrainian is eliminated from school curricula in the occupied territories and these programs are filled with Russian propaganda – all this looks like elements of the crime of genocide in accordance with the definitions of the 1948 Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,”
– the expert noted.
In addition, the Ukrainian delegation presented the exhibition “War in the Voices of Children” by the Voices of Children Foundation. These images are from the book “War in the Voices of Children”, the work of illustrators Nikita Titov, Oleksandr Grekhov, Iryna Vale, singer Jamala and her son Rahman. Several representatives of parliaments have expressed a desire to help amplify children’s voices – the exhibition was invited to the French National Assembly, the parliaments of Belgium, Portugal, Malta and Spain.